The results are in! What local highway is the worst to commute on, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Committee? Congratulations, 880! You win!
I-880 between Fremont and Oakland won the coveted "Most Unreliable Highway" award -- not only because massive traffic jams make the 22 mile road take about an hour to drive, but also because so many random things fall off people's cars into the highway and street sweepers driving (street sweepers sweep the highway?) make the route completely unpredictable. Thus, drivers have to allot an extra 13 minutes on average, on top of the 30 minute ideal commute, to allow for possible delays. That's almost 50% extra time! By contrast, 101 only needs about 16% extra time (10 minutes on a 60 minute drive from SF to SJ) and from San Ramon to SF (680/24/80), you only need 6 minutes for a 45 minute drive.
One driver, on KCBS radio, opined that the unreliability problem wasn't just the road, but also the drivers:
People really don't know how to merge on very well, even with the metering lights you still get the older cars that can't accelerate very fast and then you get the fast drivers that are driving in the slow lanes and that creates problems.Video still from ABC 7.